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<jfred>Y'all have been using a Fantasary derivative for work chat internally, right? How has it felt to use a MUD-style interface at work?

<jfred>I wonder if it might feel any more like being in the same physical place than e.g. IRC does

<cwebber>jfred: it's fun! but we don't quite have enough of the mud-like features to really have an experience report yet I think

<cwebber>it's more like tiny bots that do minimal things

<dthompson>yeah our hope is that it *will* feel more like sharing the same space

<jfred>aha, makes sense

<dthompson>but we need to develop it more

<cwebber>it's really mostly about having an ocap interactions testing environment

<cwebber>but

<cwebber>we want it to be fun eventually, fun just isn't our main focus internally... but we'll go through another iteration cycle on it within a few months I think! we go through bursts

<jfred>I've been kinda wanting a work MUD for my day job since early in the pandemic. Slack doesn't feel quite the same, haha

<cwebber>;)

<dthompson>it's a little tricky to combine MUD features and a modern slack/discord/matrix/etc. type chat experience. we need to work through some things.

<jfred>Even just for the "you're only in one place at a time" aspect. Maybe less of an issue for smaller teams but when you start to have hundreds of channels you could be notified in it gets a bit overwhelming

<cwebber>yes one challenge is eg history retention

<cwebber>people have come to expect multi-device, offline-retrievable history in slack/discord/etc, and for good reason

<cwebber>but MUDs tend to have "unique, local experiences"

<dthompson>we'd be very happy if fantasary was stable/usable enough to serve as our primary internal chat system that serves as a constant validation of goblins working as it should

<cwebber>not everyone sees the same thing

<cwebber>how to square that?

<cwebber>we've had many internal debates, and have pegged it as a design discussion for a near iteration

<cwebber>the teapot example on the unum page is a nice example of "not everyone seeing the same thing"

<cwebber> http://habitatchronicles.com/2019/08/the-unum-pattern/

<jfred>I've been thinking you could meld history retention into a MUD interface as a "video camera" object in any room that you want recorded history in

<cwebber>yes I think that's an option jfred

<dthompson>"previously, on spritely institute internal chat..."

<cwebber>;)

<jfred>probably got that idea from lambdamoo which I think had something like that in one of the rooms

<cwebber>ACTION starts playing soap opera theme song covers again

<dthompson>"previously, on All My Goblins..."

<cwebber>lol

<dthompson>fantasary as it exists now does the irc bouncer thing and leaves it to clients to retain a log... but we that's no good for a serious chat tool

<dthompson>we know that's*

<cwebber>I'm less opposed to this approach than the rest of the team ;)

<cwebber>but yeah

<dthompson>hehe well now jfred gets a taste of the somewhat conflicting desires here

<cwebber>it's tough to square expectations

<jfred>multi-device/mobile is an interesting case though yeah. mobile sessions tend to be shorter and less focused, which lends itself better to persistent history and such

<dthompson>yeah there's definitely an expectation that you can switch devices and have more than one online at a time. that's how I've used matrix and previously slack

<jfred>Maybe you could make the "idle/mobile connection" status part of the setting too, haha. "You see: jfred (listening from far away...)"

<jfred>like, acknowledge that the connectivity properties of a mobile user are different in the user interface

IRC channel logs

2024-10-09.log